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Daily Happiness
Aug. 21st, 2025 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torachan1. It has been warm and will be warm through the weekend (tomorrow is supposed to be the peak) but then is cooling off through the rest of the month. Thankfully it hasn't been super hot yet, but September is always the worst, so I'm sure that's coming.
2. Chloe and Gemma were so sweet and cuddly today! *_*
2. Chloe and Gemma were so sweet and cuddly today! *_*
Phone, again [me, tech]
Aug. 21st, 2025 05:10 amsidereaWhelp, it looks like I'm in the market for a cell phone again.
On Saturday night, I noticed something dangling from the corner of my cell phone, which immediately struck me as odd, as there's no aperture in the protective gel case there for something to get stuck. Well, there's not supposed to be. On further inspection, I discovered the corner of the gel case no longer fit over the corner of the phone, and some random shmutzig had gotten wedged... between the back plate of the phone and the rest of the phone, to which it was no longer attached along the bottom. Pressing it back down didn't work: something in the middle of the phone was causing resistance to closing the phone.
Lo, verily, my phone's battery was pregnant.
Some of you who follow me on the fediverse might be thinking, "Wait, didn't you just replace a phone, the battery of which swelled up?" Lol, yes: late April. That was my work phone. This is my personal phone. Lolsob.
So, being a proper nerd, I went right to iFixit to order myself a battery. Whereupon I was stopped by something that did not bode well. I entered my phone's model information and iFixit, instead of telling me what battery to buy, alerted me that it is not possible to determine what kind of battery my phone took from the outside.
It turns out that the OnePlus 9 G5 can take one of two batteries, and which one a given OnePlus 9 G5 takes can only be determined by putting eyes on the battery which is in it.
Well, okay then: I clicked through the helpful link to read instructions on how to pull the battery on a OnePlus 9 G5. I read along with slow dawning horror at exactly how involved it was and how many tools I would have to buy, and made it to step twelve – "Use a Phillips screwdriver to remove the ten 3.8 mm-long screws securing the motherboard cover. One of the motherboard cover screws is covered by a white water ingress sticker. To unfasten the screw you can puncture the sticker with your screwdriver." – of thirty and decided: fuck this, I will hire a professional.
(I think maybe it was a fortunate thing that I went through the prior fiasco with trying to change the battery on the Nuu B20 5G, first, because it softened me to the idea of maybe I don't have to service all my electronics personally myself.)
Alas, it was late on a Saturday night and all the cell phone repair places around me were closed until Monday.
Fortunately, I had a short day Monday and would be getting out of work around 5:30pm. I called ahead to a place that is open to 7pm to ask if I needed an appointment and whether they did OnePlus phones. There was a bit of a language barrier with the guy who answered the phone, but he said no appointment was necessary and whether they could fix my phone would entail putting eyes on it, and please try to come before 6pm to give them time to fix it before they close.
So after work, Mr B took me there, and we presented the phone. Dude got the back of the phone the rest of the way off the phone with rather more dispatch that I would be have been able to, and pretty quickly discovered that he was in over his head. Credit where it's due – "A man's got to know his limitations" – he promptly backed off, and told me to bring it back tomorrow when the more-expert boss was in.
I'm slightly irritated that we made the unnecessary trip instead of him saying, "Oh, a OnePlus, come tomorrow when our OnePlus expert is in", but it did give me the extra time to do more thorough backing-up. I have never managed to get Android File Transfer to work, nor any a number of alternatives; snapdrop.io would only do single files at a time, not whole directories, and, weirdly, Proton Drive, both app and website, doesn't allow uploading whole directories from Android either.
Finally, I saw a mention that the Android app Solid Explorer "does FTP". I wanted to make a local backup to my Mac, but, fuck it, I have servers, I can run FTP somewhere just to get my files backed up off my phone. Imagine my surprise on opening up the "FTP" option on Solid Explorer and discovering it wasn't an FTP client it was an FTP server. Yes, the easiest way I found to exchange files between my Android phone and my MacBook Pro was to put an FTP server on my phone.
Worked fine. My FTP client on my Mac sucks, but I'll solve that another day. (Does Fetch still exist?)
Mr B and I discussed it and decided he'd bring the phone in the next day, Tuesday, to spare me the hike. He returned with the phone, still with the back off, and the news that they had discovered, as I had, you have to get at the battery to even figure out which battery to order. And that he was told that the battery would be in by 3pm the next day (Wednesday). The only surprising thing here is that they could get the battery that fast.
So, today (Wednesday), after 3pm, Mr B took my phone back for a third visit, and they attempted to install my new battery.
It was the wrong battery.
( Hwaet! The saga continues... )
On Saturday night, I noticed something dangling from the corner of my cell phone, which immediately struck me as odd, as there's no aperture in the protective gel case there for something to get stuck. Well, there's not supposed to be. On further inspection, I discovered the corner of the gel case no longer fit over the corner of the phone, and some random shmutzig had gotten wedged... between the back plate of the phone and the rest of the phone, to which it was no longer attached along the bottom. Pressing it back down didn't work: something in the middle of the phone was causing resistance to closing the phone.
Lo, verily, my phone's battery was pregnant.
Some of you who follow me on the fediverse might be thinking, "Wait, didn't you just replace a phone, the battery of which swelled up?" Lol, yes: late April. That was my work phone. This is my personal phone. Lolsob.
So, being a proper nerd, I went right to iFixit to order myself a battery. Whereupon I was stopped by something that did not bode well. I entered my phone's model information and iFixit, instead of telling me what battery to buy, alerted me that it is not possible to determine what kind of battery my phone took from the outside.
It turns out that the OnePlus 9 G5 can take one of two batteries, and which one a given OnePlus 9 G5 takes can only be determined by putting eyes on the battery which is in it.
Well, okay then: I clicked through the helpful link to read instructions on how to pull the battery on a OnePlus 9 G5. I read along with slow dawning horror at exactly how involved it was and how many tools I would have to buy, and made it to step twelve – "Use a Phillips screwdriver to remove the ten 3.8 mm-long screws securing the motherboard cover. One of the motherboard cover screws is covered by a white water ingress sticker. To unfasten the screw you can puncture the sticker with your screwdriver." – of thirty and decided: fuck this, I will hire a professional.
(I think maybe it was a fortunate thing that I went through the prior fiasco with trying to change the battery on the Nuu B20 5G, first, because it softened me to the idea of maybe I don't have to service all my electronics personally myself.)
Alas, it was late on a Saturday night and all the cell phone repair places around me were closed until Monday.
Fortunately, I had a short day Monday and would be getting out of work around 5:30pm. I called ahead to a place that is open to 7pm to ask if I needed an appointment and whether they did OnePlus phones. There was a bit of a language barrier with the guy who answered the phone, but he said no appointment was necessary and whether they could fix my phone would entail putting eyes on it, and please try to come before 6pm to give them time to fix it before they close.
So after work, Mr B took me there, and we presented the phone. Dude got the back of the phone the rest of the way off the phone with rather more dispatch that I would be have been able to, and pretty quickly discovered that he was in over his head. Credit where it's due – "A man's got to know his limitations" – he promptly backed off, and told me to bring it back tomorrow when the more-expert boss was in.
I'm slightly irritated that we made the unnecessary trip instead of him saying, "Oh, a OnePlus, come tomorrow when our OnePlus expert is in", but it did give me the extra time to do more thorough backing-up. I have never managed to get Android File Transfer to work, nor any a number of alternatives; snapdrop.io would only do single files at a time, not whole directories, and, weirdly, Proton Drive, both app and website, doesn't allow uploading whole directories from Android either.
Finally, I saw a mention that the Android app Solid Explorer "does FTP". I wanted to make a local backup to my Mac, but, fuck it, I have servers, I can run FTP somewhere just to get my files backed up off my phone. Imagine my surprise on opening up the "FTP" option on Solid Explorer and discovering it wasn't an FTP client it was an FTP server. Yes, the easiest way I found to exchange files between my Android phone and my MacBook Pro was to put an FTP server on my phone.
Worked fine. My FTP client on my Mac sucks, but I'll solve that another day. (Does Fetch still exist?)
Mr B and I discussed it and decided he'd bring the phone in the next day, Tuesday, to spare me the hike. He returned with the phone, still with the back off, and the news that they had discovered, as I had, you have to get at the battery to even figure out which battery to order. And that he was told that the battery would be in by 3pm the next day (Wednesday). The only surprising thing here is that they could get the battery that fast.
So, today (Wednesday), after 3pm, Mr B took my phone back for a third visit, and they attempted to install my new battery.
It was the wrong battery.
( Hwaet! The saga continues... )
Daily Happiness
Aug. 20th, 2025 10:04 pmtorachan1. We got dinner from Shake Shack tonight and they have a really good banana shake right now.
2. I finally got all our lego sets catalogued, so now we can keep track of what we have. (You know you have too many when you need a site to keep track of them.)
3. Molly looks so sweet here! (It's because she is sweet.)
2. I finally got all our lego sets catalogued, so now we can keep track of what we have. (You know you have too many when you need a site to keep track of them.)
3. Molly looks so sweet here! (It's because she is sweet.)
Admin: Patreon: What fresh hell #728, #729 [Patreon]
Aug. 20th, 2025 04:45 amsidereaYall. I am so tired.
Last thing first. Investigating the other thing, I discovered this. I'll just cut and paste what I submitted as a ticket to Patreon:
But the other thing is this: Patreon has dropped my business model.
Apparently by accident.
When I went to Patreon to create the Patreon post for my latest Siderea Post at the end of July, I was confronted with a recent UI update. In and of itself it wouldn't have been a problem, but, as usual, they screwed something up.
They removed the affordance for a post to Patreon to both be public and paid. The new UI conflated access and payment, such that it was no longer possible to post something world-accessible and still charge patrons for it.
I found a kludge to get around it so I could get paid at all, and I fired off a support ticket asking if it was possible but unobvious, or just not possible, and if it was not possible, whether that was a policy or a mistake. I have received very apologetic reply back from Patreon support which seemed to suggest (but not actually affirm) it was an unintentional:
The support person I was corresponding with encouraged me to write back with any further questions or issues, so I did:
0) Whoa.
1) That is the best customer service response letter I've ever gotten, for reasons I will perhaps break down at some other junction. But it both does and does not read like it was written by an AI. I didn't quite know what to make of it, until someone mentioned to me the phenomenon of customer service agents at another org using AI to generate letters, and then I was like, oooooooh, maybe that's what this is. Or maybe not. Hard to say.
2) Though [REDACTED] could not confirm or deny, it sure sounds like an accident, but one that impacts such an uninteresting-to-Patreon set of creators that they can't be arsed to fix it, either in a timely way or at all.
3) "The more we can highlight how important this feature is for creators like you, the better." is a hell of a sentence. Especially in conjunction with "...along with your broader feedback about the impact on creators who fund public goods.". Reading between the lines, it sure sounds like the support people have been inundated by a little wave of outraged/anguished public-good posters, and the support people, or at least this support person, is entirely on the creators' side against higher ups brushing them off. Could be a pose, of course, but, dayum.
So that's what I know from Patreon's side.
The kludge I came up with for the post I made at the end of July is that I used another new feature – the ability to drop a cut line across a Patreon post where above it is world readable and below it is paid access only – to make a paid-access only post where 100% of the post contents are above the cut line.
Please let me know if it's not working as intended. This unfortunately has the gross effect of putting a button on my new post saying "Join to unlock".
So.
In any event, I strongly encourage those of you following me as unpaid subscribers over on Patreon to make sure you're following me, instead, here on Dreamwidth, because Patreon is flaky.
I will make a separate post with instructions as to all the ways to do that. You can get email notifications of my posts (either all or just the Siderea Posts), follow RSS and Atom feeds, get DM inbox notifications, and, of course, just follow me on your DW reading page, all on/through Dreamwidth, anonymously and completely free.
Last thing first. Investigating the other thing, I discovered this. I'll just cut and paste what I submitted as a ticket to Patreon:
I took a break of a few months, and when I came back my fees spiked. What gives?I have received no response.
I just did a month (July 2025) that extremely similar to last January (2025): similar revenues (466.19 vs 458.50), similar patrons (160 vs 162). According to my "Insights > Earnings" page, my total fees went up from 11.4% to the astounding 14.6%. Drilling down, most of that is an eye-watering 3% increase of the payment fees (5.8% to 8.8%). There was also a minor increase of Patreon's platform fee from 5.6% to 5.8%.
That represents a FIFTY-TWO PERCENT INCREASE in processing fees, and a 28% increase in fees over all.
Care to explain? Was there some announced change in payment structure or payment processor fees I missed?
But the other thing is this: Patreon has dropped my business model.
Apparently by accident.
When I went to Patreon to create the Patreon post for my latest Siderea Post at the end of July, I was confronted with a recent UI update. In and of itself it wouldn't have been a problem, but, as usual, they screwed something up.
They removed the affordance for a post to Patreon to both be public and paid. The new UI conflated access and payment, such that it was no longer possible to post something world-accessible and still charge patrons for it.
I found a kludge to get around it so I could get paid at all, and I fired off a support ticket asking if it was possible but unobvious, or just not possible, and if it was not possible, whether that was a policy or a mistake. I have received very apologetic reply back from Patreon support which seemed to suggest (but not actually affirm) it was an unintentional:
From what we've seen so far, the option to make a post publicly accessible while still charging members for it isn't possible in the new editor. Content within a paid post will only be available to those with paid access, and it won't show up for the public.So it's not like the reply was, "Oh, yes, it was announced that we wouldn't be supporting that feature any more," suggesting, contrarily, they didn't realize they were removing a feature at all.
Other creators have reported this same issue, and I want to reassure you that I've already shared this feedback with our team. If anything changes or if this feature is brought back, I'll be sure to keep you in mind and let you know right away.
The support person I was corresponding with encouraged me to write back with any further questions or issues, so I did:
Hi, [REDACTED], thanks for getting back to me. I have both some more questions and feedback.I got this response:
1) Question: Am I understanding correctly, that the new UI's failure to support having publicly accessible paid posts was an oversight, and not a policy decision to no longer support that business model? Like, there's not an announcement this was going away that I missed? As a blogger who often writes about Patreon itself, I'd like to be able to clarify the situation for my readers.
2) Question: Do you have any news to share whether Patreon intends to restore this functionality? Is fixing this being put on a development roadmap, or should those of us who relied on this functionality just start making other plans? Again: my readers want to know, too.
3) Suggestion: If Patreon intends to restore this functionality, given the way the new UI is organized, the way to add the functionality back in is under "Free Access > More options" there should also be a "charge for this post" button, which then ungrays more options for charging a subset of patrons, defaulting to "charge all patrons".
4) Feedback: The affordance that was removed, of being able to charge patrons for world-accessible content, was my whole business model. I'm not the only one, as I gather you already have discovered. In case Patreon were corporately unaware, this is the business model of creators using Patreon to fund public goods, such as journalism, activism, and open source software. My patrons aren't paying me to give them something; my patrons are paying me to give something to the world. Please pass this along to whomever it's news.
5) Feedback: This is the sort of gaffe which suggests to creators that Patreon is out of touch with its users and doesn't appreciate the full breadth of how creators use Patreon. It is the latest in a long line of incidents that suggests to creators that Patreon is not a platform for creators, Patreon is a platform for music video creators, and everybody else is a red-headed stepchild whom Patreon corporately feels should be grateful they are allowed to use the platform at all. It makes those of us who are not music video creators feel unwelcome on Patreon.
6) Feedback: Being able to charge patrons for world-accessible content is one of a small and dwindling list of features that differentiated Patreon from cheaper competitors. Just sayin'.
7) Feedback: I thought you should know: my user experience has become that when I open Patreon to make a post, I have no idea whether I will be able to. I have to schedule an hour to engage with the Patreon new post workflow because I won't know what will be changed, what will be broken, etc. It would be nice if Patreon worked reliably. My experience as a creator-user of your site is NOT, "Oh, I don't like the choices available to me", it's that the site is unstable, flaky, unpredictable, unreliable.
Hi Siderea,Several observations:
Thank you so much for your thoughtful follow-up and for sharing your questions and feedback in such detail.
To address your first question, I can’t speak to whether this change was an oversight or a deliberate policy decision, but I can confirm there hasn’t been any official announcement about removing the ability to charge members for world-accessible posts. If anything changes or if we receive more clarity from our product team, I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
At this time, I also don’t have any news to share about whether this functionality will be restored or if it’s on the development roadmap.
I know that’s not the most satisfying answer, but I want to reassure you that your feedback and suggestions are being shared directly with the relevant teams. The more we can highlight how important this feature is for creators like you, the better.
Thank you as well for your suggestion about how this could be reintroduced in the UI—I’ll make sure to pass that along, along with your broader feedback about the impact on creators who fund public goods. Your perspective is incredibly valuable, and I just want to truly thank you for taking the time to lay it all out so clearly.
If you have any more thoughts, questions, or ideas, please let me know, and I’ll be happy to take a further look. I appreciate your patience and your willingness to advocate for the creator community.
All the best,
[REDACTED]
0) Whoa.
1) That is the best customer service response letter I've ever gotten, for reasons I will perhaps break down at some other junction. But it both does and does not read like it was written by an AI. I didn't quite know what to make of it, until someone mentioned to me the phenomenon of customer service agents at another org using AI to generate letters, and then I was like, oooooooh, maybe that's what this is. Or maybe not. Hard to say.
2) Though [REDACTED] could not confirm or deny, it sure sounds like an accident, but one that impacts such an uninteresting-to-Patreon set of creators that they can't be arsed to fix it, either in a timely way or at all.
3) "The more we can highlight how important this feature is for creators like you, the better." is a hell of a sentence. Especially in conjunction with "...along with your broader feedback about the impact on creators who fund public goods.". Reading between the lines, it sure sounds like the support people have been inundated by a little wave of outraged/anguished public-good posters, and the support people, or at least this support person, is entirely on the creators' side against higher ups brushing them off. Could be a pose, of course, but, dayum.
So that's what I know from Patreon's side.
The kludge I came up with for the post I made at the end of July is that I used another new feature – the ability to drop a cut line across a Patreon post where above it is world readable and below it is paid access only – to make a paid-access only post where 100% of the post contents are above the cut line.
Please let me know if it's not working as intended. This unfortunately has the gross effect of putting a button on my new post saying "Join to unlock".
So.
In any event, I strongly encourage those of you following me as unpaid subscribers over on Patreon to make sure you're following me, instead, here on Dreamwidth, because Patreon is flaky.
I will make a separate post with instructions as to all the ways to do that. You can get email notifications of my posts (either all or just the Siderea Posts), follow RSS and Atom feeds, get DM inbox notifications, and, of course, just follow me on your DW reading page, all on/through Dreamwidth, anonymously and completely free.
Daily Happiness
Aug. 19th, 2025 08:17 pmtorachan1. Both yesterday and today I had longish meetings that started at three, so I didn't get home until later, but for the rest of the week all my meetings are earlier, so I should be able to finish up sooner (or at least come home earlier and finish up there).
2. Yesterday one of our store managers turned in her two weeks notice, which sucks, as she is a good manager and also I like her personally, but she has to move back to Hawaii for family reasons. When I mentioned that to our company president, though, he said that if she's interested, they can probably find her a position at one of our Hawaii stores. It's not as easy as transferring locations within California, because while they're under our same parent company, they're separate from us, but it looks very likely, and she's interested, so I'm glad for her about that. (In terms of what will happen to the store she's at now, thankfully it's not one of our further away stores, so it should be easy to sort out a new manager.)
3. The armrests on this sofa are perfectly cat height.
2. Yesterday one of our store managers turned in her two weeks notice, which sucks, as she is a good manager and also I like her personally, but she has to move back to Hawaii for family reasons. When I mentioned that to our company president, though, he said that if she's interested, they can probably find her a position at one of our Hawaii stores. It's not as easy as transferring locations within California, because while they're under our same parent company, they're separate from us, but it looks very likely, and she's interested, so I'm glad for her about that. (In terms of what will happen to the store she's at now, thankfully it's not one of our further away stores, so it should be easy to sort out a new manager.)
3. The armrests on this sofa are perfectly cat height.
Daily Happiness
Aug. 18th, 2025 09:18 pmtorachan1. The area manager who has been out on maternity leave for three months is back to work today. I'm glad to have her back, but wow there was a lot to catch her up on while she's been gone. I feel like I did so much talking today lol.
2. Tomorrow I have a meeting in the afternoon, but can have a leisurely morning, which I am looking forward to, as today was spent almost entirely with the aforementioned catching up and then an afternoon meeting, and I got home lateish and didn't really have much time to do other stuff, either work or personal.
3. Tuxie loves curling up under these plants.
2. Tomorrow I have a meeting in the afternoon, but can have a leisurely morning, which I am looking forward to, as today was spent almost entirely with the aforementioned catching up and then an afternoon meeting, and I got home lateish and didn't really have much time to do other stuff, either work or personal.
3. Tuxie loves curling up under these plants.
Daily Happiness
Aug. 17th, 2025 08:29 pmtorachan1. We had a nice time at Disneyland this morning (overcast and low temps most of the time and very light crowds) and successfully got the Kuzco sipper! We try not to collect the popcorn buckets and sippers because they don't actually get used and are just decorative, but take up a lot of space, but Kuzco's poison is always a must buy.
2. I don't have to go to Irvine at all this week, which is nice. I do have meetings in Gardena every day, but that's like less than half the drive.
3. Jasper looks so solemn!
2. I don't have to go to Irvine at all this week, which is nice. I do have meetings in Gardena every day, but that's like less than half the drive.
3. Jasper looks so solemn!
2025 Disneyland Trip #56 (8/17/25)
Aug. 17th, 2025 04:56 pmtorachanWe made sure to get to the park right when they opened today because the Kuzco sipper goes on sale today and based on how fast the glow cubes sold out last year, we knew we had to act fast.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Daily Happiness
Aug. 16th, 2025 09:02 pmtorachan1. I finished a new puzzle. After that Disney one, this one was a breeze!
2. Went up to the farmers market this morning and the stand that usually has lemonade didn't have any today! They said they forgot to load the cooler on the truck. :( But I noticed that the Filipino/Mexican fusion place where we often get tamales and cookies also has juices. I hadn't noticed before because they don't have the actual bottles out on the table, just a small sign. But they have a jamaica ginger one and a calamansi ginger one, so I got one of each and had the calamansi earlier and it was delicious.
3. Today I did a bunch of chores and also had loads of time to just play Donkey Kong Bananza and read and it was just a really nice, chill day.
4. Gemma lurking under Carla's desk (one of her favorite spots).
2. Went up to the farmers market this morning and the stand that usually has lemonade didn't have any today! They said they forgot to load the cooler on the truck. :( But I noticed that the Filipino/Mexican fusion place where we often get tamales and cookies also has juices. I hadn't noticed before because they don't have the actual bottles out on the table, just a small sign. But they have a jamaica ginger one and a calamansi ginger one, so I got one of each and had the calamansi earlier and it was delicious.
3. Today I did a bunch of chores and also had loads of time to just play Donkey Kong Bananza and read and it was just a really nice, chill day.
4. Gemma lurking under Carla's desk (one of her favorite spots).
Weekly Reading
Aug. 16th, 2025 04:43 pmtorachanCurrently Reading
How to Survive a Horror Story
16%. A group of people are invited to the reading of a will for a famous horror author at his family mansion, only to find it's haunted. Interesting so far.
Newcomer
52%. Second (in the English translation order) Detective Kaga mystery. This is told in an interesting manner, not with the detective as the POV character, but with each section being from the POV of a possible suspect, but with each section wrapping up by clearing that person. I liked the first book better, but I'm enjoying this one, too.
Shady Hollow
74%. A typical small village murder mystery, but they're all woodland creatures. I got this on an audible sale when I was looking for a second book to buy on a buy one get one free sale, so I took a chance on something I was not wholly sold on and without having finished this book I can say I definitely will not be continuing the series. I have often struggled to figure out what makes something a "cozy mystery", and it seems that a lot of times things are declared to be cozies just because the person solving the mystery is a woman, or they're not a professional, but then I started this book and I'm like, that's definitely a cozy mystery. Way more time is spent on describing in detail the various animals and their town and all that than on the mystery, especially in the first third of the book. It's not what I'm interested in, and for me this would have worked much better as a comic, where you can just show all the cute animals and stuff through illustration, without going on and on about it forever. The mystery is fine, though, so it's not a bad book, just not a good fit for me.
The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
13%.
Recently Finished
Isle of Ever
I was not expecting this book to end without wrapping anything up. There is a sequel, and this really feels like what should be one book split into two, which is not my preference.
A Death at the Dionysus Club
I guess these books are from a small publisher, but that doesn't excuse the lack of professionalism in the audiobooks. The first one had a narrator with a lozenge in his mouth the whole time, and this second one has a different narrator who did the whole first chapter in a wildly different voice than he did the rest of the book, like he was trying it out and decided not to continue with it, but rather than rerecord the first chapter, just left it at that. The voice used for the first chapter was terrible, so I'm glad he switched, but why on earth leave it like that?
Drop Dead Sisters
This was fun. Not sure if I will read the sequel or not, though.
Abscond
Coming of age short story set in the 1960s about an Indian American boy dealing with his father's sudden death. I enjoyed it.
How to Survive a Horror Story
16%. A group of people are invited to the reading of a will for a famous horror author at his family mansion, only to find it's haunted. Interesting so far.
Newcomer
52%. Second (in the English translation order) Detective Kaga mystery. This is told in an interesting manner, not with the detective as the POV character, but with each section being from the POV of a possible suspect, but with each section wrapping up by clearing that person. I liked the first book better, but I'm enjoying this one, too.
Shady Hollow
74%. A typical small village murder mystery, but they're all woodland creatures. I got this on an audible sale when I was looking for a second book to buy on a buy one get one free sale, so I took a chance on something I was not wholly sold on and without having finished this book I can say I definitely will not be continuing the series. I have often struggled to figure out what makes something a "cozy mystery", and it seems that a lot of times things are declared to be cozies just because the person solving the mystery is a woman, or they're not a professional, but then I started this book and I'm like, that's definitely a cozy mystery. Way more time is spent on describing in detail the various animals and their town and all that than on the mystery, especially in the first third of the book. It's not what I'm interested in, and for me this would have worked much better as a comic, where you can just show all the cute animals and stuff through illustration, without going on and on about it forever. The mystery is fine, though, so it's not a bad book, just not a good fit for me.
The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
13%.
Recently Finished
Isle of Ever
I was not expecting this book to end without wrapping anything up. There is a sequel, and this really feels like what should be one book split into two, which is not my preference.
A Death at the Dionysus Club
I guess these books are from a small publisher, but that doesn't excuse the lack of professionalism in the audiobooks. The first one had a narrator with a lozenge in his mouth the whole time, and this second one has a different narrator who did the whole first chapter in a wildly different voice than he did the rest of the book, like he was trying it out and decided not to continue with it, but rather than rerecord the first chapter, just left it at that. The voice used for the first chapter was terrible, so I'm glad he switched, but why on earth leave it like that?
Drop Dead Sisters
This was fun. Not sure if I will read the sequel or not, though.
Abscond
Coming of age short story set in the 1960s about an Indian American boy dealing with his father's sudden death. I enjoyed it.
Daily Happiness
Aug. 15th, 2025 10:56 pmtorachan1. It's the weekend! I feel like it's been a long week for some reason, even though I haven't had to help out with the new store as much.
2. We ordered from this fried chicken place we got from a couple times a while back and then forgot about. They have a new salad on the menu which had fried chicken, edamame, cucumbers, daikon radish, crunchy ramen topping, and a yuzu dressing. It was so good and also so huge, so I have plenty left for lunch tomorrow.
3. Cutie sleepy Chloe.
2. We ordered from this fried chicken place we got from a couple times a while back and then forgot about. They have a new salad on the menu which had fried chicken, edamame, cucumbers, daikon radish, crunchy ramen topping, and a yuzu dressing. It was so good and also so huge, so I have plenty left for lunch tomorrow.
3. Cutie sleepy Chloe.
The King is Dead is Dead!
Aug. 16th, 2025 12:45 pmcontrarianarchonWhat is the king is dead?
So, I played in another big cool thing, so I figured I'd write another effortpost about how big and cool it was. This time, the thing I played in was a game called "The King is Dead" - a Kriegspiel/Cataphract type game where a medieval succession dispute was handled using a real-time operations simulation engine where every single decision-maker was played by a human.
( Read more... )
So, I played in another big cool thing, so I figured I'd write another effortpost about how big and cool it was. This time, the thing I played in was a game called "The King is Dead" - a Kriegspiel/Cataphract type game where a medieval succession dispute was handled using a real-time operations simulation engine where every single decision-maker was played by a human.
( Read more... )
2025 Disneyland Trip #55 (8/14/25)
Aug. 15th, 2025 08:50 pmtorachanWe went down to Disneyland for dinner last night. It's that in-between season when we've pretty much exhausted all the new menu items and seen all the summer stuff, but while they're getting ready for Halloween, it's not quite there yet. It was very busy, though, because the two lower tiers of passholders have been blocked out for most of the summer and can finally come back, plus there are two special magic key promos right now (a free shopping bag and 50% off lightning lane passes), so people were after those.
( Mostly Halloween )
( Mostly Halloween )
Daily Happiness
Aug. 14th, 2025 11:25 pmtorachan1. We went to Disneyland for dinner this evening. It was very busy (lower level passholders who were blocked out for summer are back, plus there are currently two Magic Key promos going on that are probably driving even more people to visit specifically during these few days) but we had a nice time.
2. Our next two new stores both got pushed back, so they're now going to be February and June of next year, which means early April will be the perfect time to take another trip to Japan.
3. That snoot!
2. Our next two new stores both got pushed back, so they're now going to be February and June of next year, which means early April will be the perfect time to take another trip to Japan.
3. That snoot!
Daily Happiness
Aug. 13th, 2025 09:27 pmtorachan1. We got Indian food from the same place as we did a couple weeks ago and this time both our main focus was the batter fried paneer sticks lol. I just ordered them on a whim last time (they're called paneer pakora so I was expecting more of something filled with cheese rather than what it was) but they were so good. (The other food we got was good, too, but these would be hard to top.)
2. I am so glad I spotted Ollie like this and was able to get some photos. Truly a sight to brighten any day.
2. I am so glad I spotted Ollie like this and was able to get some photos. Truly a sight to brighten any day.
